


A Liar A Thief and an Apology

by Amberly



Series: Just Like Heaven [6]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, references to past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberly/pseuds/Amberly
Summary: There was only one way he could apologize. A way he could offer Wufei back his stolen heart with his own alongside it.





	A Liar A Thief and an Apology

**Author's Note:**

> This has been knocking around my brain for about as long as the Just Like Heaven verse has existed. It’s Duo’s POV, focused on where he was while Wufei was missing him in Alive Back from the Dead. It’s an introspective, Duo-Brain driven piece, with some light banter. I hope y’all enjoy it, and thanks for reading!

Duo had never been so terrified of the silence. It was dark, cold, something somewhere dripping--his only sound. A steady pattern of water falling into water that reminded him to breathe slowly, to count off the rise and fall of his chest the way Wufei had taught him, a lifetime go. When he was fifteen and full of fire and the sparks between them were just a match compared to the storm of fire between them now. It wasn't so bad here, really. It was better than being dead. And maybe there had been worse. Closer brushes with death. But  it was hard to think of them now, tied to a chair in a closet. The small space was comforting. It meant he wasn’t pulled out, wasn’t laid out like meat for so many knives. But the closet brought its own brand of torture, the quiet full of shadows he couldn’t kill. 

If he could just get them to pull him out of the closet, give him some room, he'd be able to wiggle his way free. But his arms were pinned against his sides and his wrists were tied to the chair, and so were his ankles. He was blindfolded and off balance, left in the dark with too much time to think, too many memories coiled together, shifting like a restless dragon.  His restless dragon, Wufei pacing with unbound hair in their bedroom, hands behind his back. A pose Duo recognized, that tugged at his heart as he recognized it from a dozen bloody battles. The tense set of Wufei’s shoulders, the clench of his jaw. The silence, sitting heavy between them like a dropped colony. He could barely remember the taste of him, now. There were words still crouching in Duo’s mouth, waiting to be spoken in to life. Or left stillborn on his tongue, as dead as the rest of him. 

If they'd just give him some space--what he always asked for. Space, time to think, a way to keep his heart safe in his chest and hold Wufei’s too. The irony wasn’t lost on him, now. It felt a million miles away, their bedroom. The perfume of their garden, scent of the ocean behind it. Wufei gave him every inch without a fight, but his captors gave him nothing. Kept him locked, tied tight, left Duo with all the time to think he’d ever needed, heart reduced to an organ. To pumping blood they spilled with no thought. They'd busted his lip, and he'd have some bruises on his arms and chest, but they hadn't done anything else. Nothing but talk.

They were all talk, asking questions he couldn’t answer about a deal that technically didn’t exist, some arrangement between Quatre and a merc out of L3, someone with no name and no papers Duo would give his last breath to protect, the unrest on L2 merely a gang rising too high, too fast. There, again, the irony. He’d come to keep his colony safe and found a waste of time, the monster under the bed nothing but smoke and bad dreams. They’d caught him by sheer luck, the excuse he’d always run away on turning to quicksand under his feet. 

The door to the closet swung open. He felt it, heard the hinges as they creaked. Every muscle in his body tensed as he was dragged into open air, hairs prickling on his body at the sudden flux in pressure. He was weak. They gave him only what he needed to survive, didn’t worry about keeping him healthy. Only alive, for now, until they realized he wasn’t going to talk. And then he’d be dead in more than name. It would be more than just the formality of Une’s missed check-in protocol. Duo shuddered, steeling himself as the blindfold was ripped off, eyes blinking in the sudden light and—

“You!” 

“Me,” a voice confirmed, clipped and accented, narrowed green eyes sweeping over him. “You look like shit.” 

“Well thanks, Princess. Let’s put you in a closet for God only knows how long, and we’ll see how good you look.” 

“It has been three weeks,” his savior  informed him, arms crossed over his chest. Hands clasping his biceps. “Une reported you dead two weeks ago. Do you know” his voice lowered as he leaned in, glowering at him, a tiger tensed and pacing its cage “how long it has taken me to find you?” 

“I dunno,” Duo rolled his eyes, shoulder twisting as he strained against his bindings. “Like, ten minutes? Come on, Tro. Help me out.” There was a snort, the slide of steel against his skin, and Duo’s wrist was free. He relaxed in to the chair, watching as the Russian made quick work of the rest of his bindings, cursing the whole time. 

“It has taken me” snick “a week” snick “to find you. And you!” There was a knife leveled at his face, a world of accusation hung on every word. “You will owe me a new knife. And more things. So many more things, Duo.” There was a beat of quiet. “Wufei contacted me.” 

Duo stood and fell in the same moment. Trowa was there, catching him beneath the arms with a tut and setting him back on the chair, forever a safety net he could rely on. There was a voice, in the distance. Something about his muscles, about atrophy, but also Duo could see was Wufei. All Duo could hear was his voice, breathless against his ear as they sprawled out in bed together. The hardness of it when they fought. Duo closed his eyes and let himself free fall into the solid warmth of Trowa’s arms. Let himself take a deep, dragging breath and curl his fingers in the thick fabric of his shirt. 

“We cannot stay here.” It was gentle, Trowa’s hands smoothing back his hair. Collecting the weight of his dirty braid in one hand and drawing it to his nose, letting out a soft gagging sound. “And you need a bath.” 

“I need--” Duo choked on the absence of smoke. 

“I know,” Trowa sighed, wrapping his arm around his waist. “But let us get you home first, da?” He nodded and swayed, pushed himself away from Trowa and standing unsteadily on his own two feet. The room was small, an office, with big windows overlooking an empty factory. Something had been there, once. Cleared out quickly, pieces and bits still littering the floor. There was fury in him, then, white hot and seething as he snarled, picking up a stapler and throwing it through a window, letting himself shatter with the glass. Behind him, Trowa let out a soft snort of amusement. 

“Motherfucker,” Duo seethed, hands running in to his filthy hair. They were gone, and with them any chance of hunting them. Unless Trowa—he shot a sharp look over his shoulder, feeling a surge of exultation as the Russian sighed. 

“I have explosives. You need water, and food. And then you can have vengeance, Da?” 

“Da,” Duo shot back, reaching out for him with trembling fingers, legs unsteady. 

The rest was a blur. He remembered fire, whooping at the top of his lungs as Trowa held him and cursed, his too-clever hands faster than his, drawing out a small incendiary and setting the warehouse ablaze as they ran. It was for a Wufei, he remembered thinking. For his Dragon, too far away to make his own flames, to take down their enemies. Duo remembered a hard bed, long fingers massaging shampoo through his hair. A fever, burning through him. 

In the tangle of blank space was pain, long and searing across his leg, the unforgiving kiss of pavement against his temple as he dropped. His captors fought, but there were few who could withstand Shinigami and the Silencer. It gave him a sick kind of pleasure to watch their faces. To know as they knew that the man they’d been hunting had hunted them back. Had found them, would ruin them, and that Duo would help. He wanted to dance on the wreckage, but Trowa—Trowa was cool and ice, throwing him over his shoulder as he cackled. 

“You are sick.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy this, Barton.”

“Nyet. I mean that you are ill. You have a fever.” 

“I—“ Duo’s retort died as his body made itself known, the gunshot graze on his thigh stinging and seeping blood, head aching. Trowa cursed and carried him to their hole. Tended him with his skilled medic’s hands even as he booked their flight home as Duo gave himself over to the dark, resting and letting what fire was left in his veins burn itself out.

* * *

 

It was on the shuttle that he finally asked. 

“Did you—call?”

“I did not,” Trowa replied, leveling him with a look. “You left, Duo. You were very clear that you wanted space. I did not think it my place.” 

“Oh.” Duo drew his lower lip between his teeth. Trowa wasn’t wrong. That was the worst part. He was right, and it stung. Caught in his lungs like smoke, a slow death as he closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat, reading off the litany of his mistakes to the hushed sounds of travel through space. 

It had started with a mission. With a threat he needed to investigate, his job giving him an out when he couldn’t stay. A year’s perspective told him he’s been scared. Wufei was too good, was all the things Duo had ever needed. Heero’d has his therapy. Duo’s had nothing but his friends, his job. He’d thrown himself into work and used it as a shield against emotions he didn’t know how to handle. It seemed a waste now. He’d taken off with Wufei’s heart in his back pocket and only the vaguest intention of returning it—the worst from he’d ever committed. 

“I need to apologize.”

“You do,” Trowa agreed, closing whatever book he’d been reading. “Wufei deserves better.” 

“I know.” Duo swallowed and hung his head. Used his thumbnail to chip away at the fresh polish on his fingers. The sigh he received was exasperated, the book a heavy weight as Trowa hit him on the side of the head. “Hey!”

“Not like that. You are all that Wufei wants—and he deserves what he wants.” Sniffing, Trowa opened his book once more. “But he deserves better than you disappearing for a year. That is what you must make up for. If you are home, let him know that you are home. For good.” 

The enormity of it was a heavier strike than Trowa’s book. Duo reeled with it, panic rising in his chest as he clutched at the arms of his chair. For good. No more running, no more hiding. Him and Wufei, for however long they were allowed to have each other. And didn’t Wufei deserve forever? Didn’t, a small quietly accented Japanese voice suggested, Duo deserve it, too? And they’d talked about it. Wasn’t that what had sent him running before? There was only one way he could apologize. A way he could offer Wufei back his stolen heart with his own alongside it. 

“Well,” Duo swallowed hard. “I guess I’m going to have to marry him.” There was something satisfying in the sound of breaking glass, the hard Russian curses. “Stop that. I need you to help me plan.” 

“You owe me so many things, Maxwell.” 

“Yeah, Yeah. Put it on my tab.” Duo grinned, delighted and nervous and ready, finally, to settle down. Trowa grinned back, a quiet smugness in his green eyes. As if he was, somehow, responsible for everything. Maybe, Duo thought, he was. 

“I will.”


End file.
